


this sweet plague

by gothyringwald



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Blood and Gore, First Kiss, Flashbacks, Hopeful Ending, Horror, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Past Character Death, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reunions, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2018-10-22
Packaged: 2019-08-05 14:41:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16369535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gothyringwald/pseuds/gothyringwald
Summary: In 1985 Steve Harrington dies. His parents and the people of Hawkins all believe it was a tragic accident. Only a small group of people know he died valiantly protecting his friends from monsters. Six months later, he is one of the dead who rise again.





	this sweet plague

**Author's Note:**

> I've written a few one shots lately but I've been too anxious to post them. It seemed a shame not to post this during Halloween month though so here we are.
> 
> I've had this idea to write a series of one shots about Steve and/or Billy being some kind of monsters and I knew I wanted one to be a zombie AU drawing on the lore of [In the Flesh](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Flesh_\(TV_series\)) (which is brilliant and too short-lived but do watch it if you haven't!) and then this popped into my head practically fully formed. It takes some inspiration from the graveyard scene with Kieren and Amy in the first series of In the Flesh.
> 
> I don't think you need to have seen In the Flesh to understand this, though. (I hope I've done an OK enough job weaving in some backstory/lore in just 1.7k!) 
> 
> If you want extra info on the implied/referenced suicide tag, I've added a little at the end, but as suggested by the summary it doesn't pertain to Steve. Also there is a small section of Steve thinking about eating brains that I wasn't sure what to tag for. (I guess gore should cover it). But...he's a zombie...so...?
> 
> (Now that I've written this whole thing I feel like someone else did something similar so...oops, if so!)

A light rain mists over Steve as he ducks under the yellow tape that says 'Hazard', though he doesn't feel it. He doesn't feel the cold wind that blows past, either, but he pulls his coat tighter around himself all the same. Old habits.

His feet sink into the soft earth as he moves through the cemetery, checking each headstone until he finds the one he's looking for. The earth is collapsed before it, the coffin buried in the dirt broken and empty. He carefully moves around the opened grave and kneels to the side of the headstone. 

It's covered in moss and he clears it away until he can read the inscription:

_Steve Harrington_  
_1966-1985_  
_Beloved in life_

There's a tight feeling in his chest as he traces his fingers along his own name. He rests his hand over the 1985 and squeezes his eyes shut tight. Tries to force away the memories that the medication brings back but they come too fast. The memory of terror, waking up to complete darkness, thinking he'd been buried alive. Clawing his way out through satin and lacquered wood and six feet of loamy earth. The preternatural strength it took. The other bodies, rotting and decomposing, pulling themselves out of neighbouring graves as he rose. Confusion. And then the overwhelming hunger, the primal instinct to feed.

Steve opens his eyes, gasping, but he doesn't need the air. His lungs have decayed, anyway. Another habit, another remnant of his previous life.

That's when he hears a voice, a few rows away, low and angry. He ducks down, then peeks around his headstone. A flash of dishwater blond hair and a black leather jacket, then he ducks down again, spine flat against the edge of his headstone. He wasn't meant to leave the house, wasn't meant to be seen.

That was what his parents had told him. It's not that Hawkins is hostile to the undead, exactly, but what about their reputation? How would it look for them to have a son like Steve? But he'd felt claustrophobic after being stuck in the treatment centre for months, then his house for days, and the morbid desire to see his own grave kept growing and so, when the nurse his parents had hired to administer his shots had left for the day, he slipped out of the house, and made his way to the old Hawkins cemetery with all its empty graves.

And now he's going to get caught. He pushes himself to a crouch—stiff limbs protesting—and makes a run for it. Or tries to. But he trips and alerts whoever else is there and they're yelling out 'Hey!' and making their way over before Steve can get up.

From the way they move, he knows it's another one like him. It roars, though, arms out like something from an old horror movie and Steve thinks god, is it rabid? Will it eat me, even though I'm like them?

He doesn't look up into their face, just gropes around until he finds something weapon-shaped then lunges. 

The zombie stops, slumping. Clutching at the metal pole in its stomach. It groans, unintelligible and horrible, and guilt floods Steve. But then it looks up, laughing and pointing. 'You should have seen your face, man!'

Steve blinks, recognition washing over him. 'Oh my god. Billy?' Steve stands, brushing himself off. 'I'm so sorry.'

'Don't sweat it, Harrington,' Billy Hargrove says, the pole Steve had speared him with still sticking out of his stomach. 'Didn't feel a thing.'

'I didn't—' Steve starts, looking at Billy's ashen skin, the blue-black around his mouth, the staples stitching his face together from hairline to ear. 'I didn't know you were…'

'A zombie?' Billy says.

Steve winces. They're not meant to call themselves that. But he says, 'Yeah.'

Billy pulls the pole out of his stomach and throws it aside. He pokes at the new hole, fingers coming away black, then shrugs. He turns and walks back toward Steve's grave. 

Steve follows him hands in his pockets. 

'I haven't been here since your...' Billy trails off but Steve can easily fill in the blank. 

He looks over at Billy. The thought of him at Steve's funeral is strange. Did he wear a suit? Did he bring flowers? Did he— Was he— 

Billy bites his thumbnail, staring at Steve's grave, silent, brow furrowed. 'I like your epitaph,' he finally says, with a smirk that looks forced.

'Not like I chose it,' Steve says. It feels like Billy had wanted to say something else but Steve lets it go. 'What does yours say?'

'Don't have one,' Billy says, voice clipped. 'At least the asshole buried me.' He takes out a pack of cigarettes, lights one, offers it to Steve. 

'Should we be smoking?' Steve eyes the cigarette warily, but he takes it from Billy, anyway.

'Not exactly gonna kill us, is it?' Billy says.

Steve snorts. 'Just meant…we can't eat or drink. And we don't exactly breathe. So I wondered…'

Billy shrugs, again. 'I've managed.' He lights another cigarette for himself.

There's something about the action of bringing the cigarette to his mouth that's comforting to Steve, even if he can't smoke properly. He looks at Billy sidelong, at the familiar, yet strange, face. He's thought about Billy frequently since the medication started repairing his brain cells. Wondered what happened to his once enemy turned, well, best friend. Figured he'd be living in California, maybe having killed zombies during the Rising. Never thought he'd be like Steve.

'How'd you, uh, you know?' Steve asks.

'Kick the bucket?'

Steve bites his lip. 'Yeah.'

'Drove into a tree.'

Thunder rumbles and the promise of a storm hangs in the air. Steve doesn't know why, but he asks, 'Was it on purpose?'

Billy gives him a long look, made all the more unsettling by his milky irises, and ashes his cigarette. Finally, he says, 'I don't even know anymore, man.'

Something uncomfortable bucks in Steve's chest. He kicks at a stray rock and hugs his arms around himself. 'How long after I…'

'Couple of weeks,' Billy says.

'Oh.' There is a part of Steve that wonders if Billy did it because of Steve. But he wouldn't have. They were close but they weren't... It was just a coincidence. Still, the details of Billy's death weigh heavily on him.

A small, selfish part of Steve is glad not to be alone in this though. 'It's good to see you,' he says.

'Yeah.' Billy turns away. 'You know this isn't the first time we've met since we turned all Romero,' he says.

Steve frowns. 'What do you mean?' he asks, but then the muted sunlight catches on Billy's earring and it sends Steve reeling into another flashback. 

The last time he saw that earring wasn't the night he died—Billy yelling, too late, for Steve to watch out—but one year after that. Crouching over a dead body, a gnawing hunger consuming him. Always so so hungry. Steve had looked up and seen another like him. He doesn't know if he'd registered that it was Billy, then, or if his newly repaired brain is filling in the gaps. But they'd fed together that much he knows. Steve can still feel flesh and hair pulled from bone. Skull breaking beneath his too-strong hands. Blood everywhere. His fingers digging in, past shattered bone, pulling out sticky globs of brain. The heat of it in his mouth, the pulpy taste, the soft gummy feel against his tongue.

'Harrington? You OK?' Billy's voice comes to him as though from faraway, or under water.

'Oh, god,' Steve says, hand flying to his mouth. He slumps down by his headstone, rests his head in his hands. 'I don't want to remember.' 

'Hey,' Billy says, kneeling by him. 'Hey, it's OK. If we didn't do that, we would've just rotted away,' he says, like they were just eating fucking hamburgers.

Steve looks up. 'Don't,' he says, voice dark. 'Just don't.'

Billy raises his hands. 'OK.' He carefully sits by Steve. 'Sorry. Just…that was one of the first things I remembered. At the treatment centre.' He runs a hand over the back of his neck. 'You were one of the first things I remembered.'

Steve blinks at Billy. He doesn't know what to make of that revelation. But it knocks something loose within him and he reaches out, touches one of the staples on Billy's temple. 'Why don't you wear the makeup?' he asks. His own face is covered in a thick layer of the pancake stuff, meant to make him look more palatable to the living. Just like the contacts that sit uncomfortably over his washed out eyes. Steve doesn't like looking at himself without them, but it suits Billy in an odd sort of way.

Billy's lips quirk. 'I'm handsome enough without it.'

Steve barks out a laugh and the rest of the tension the flashback had shot through him unspools. 'I missed this,' he says and knocks his knee against Billy's. 'I missed you.'

Billy's smirk fades. 'You're the one who…' His voice sounds tight.

Something long buried yawns open within Steve. If his heart could beat it would be thundering right now. 'I guess we get a second chance. To do the things we missed out on.'

'What did you miss out on, Harrington?'

Steve looks at Billy and thinks of the nights they spent together. How they kept circling closer and closer but he was always too scared to make the final leap. Scared he'd misread the signals. He's not scared now. Not of this. So, instead of saying anything, he leans forward and presses his cold lips against Billy's. 

Billy kisses back, licking into the blackness of Steve's mouth, cupping his jaw. Steve traces his thumb along the stitches on Billy's face, hand trembling. He wishes they'd done this when he could actually feel but he thinks if he concentrates enough, he can conjure up a memory of kissing, can make believe he can feel Billy's lips, his tongue.

They pull away, mouths shining black. 'I wish I could feel you,' Billy says, like he can read Steve's mind.

'Yeah, me too,' Steve says and rests his hand on Billy's chest. Thinks about the heart beneath his palm that no longer beats. He looks into Billy's pale eyes and says, 'But at least we have this. Right?'

Billy places his own hand on Steve's chest, mirroring Steve. He curls his fingers into Steve's shirt, searching Steve's eyes. He must find what he's looking for because he says, 'Right,' and kisses Steve again just as thunder cracks and the sky opens up.

**Author's Note:**

> So, the implied/referenced suicide tag is because Billy says he's not sure whether he drove his car into a tree on purpose or not. I think Billy's uncertainty is more than enough to warrant a tag for it, just to be on the safe side.
> 
> Please feel free to come find me on tumblr [@gothyringwald](http://gothyringwald.tumblr.com/) – I'm always keen to flail about dumb boys and/or cry over undead boyfriends! I have [a little promo post for the fic there](http://gothyringwald.tumblr.com/post/179293258820/this-sweet-plague) too which you are more than welcome to reblog :)
> 
> I seem to finish a lot of my fics with 'and they kissed again' haha
> 
> I feel like this could easily be part of a larger AU based on In the Flesh—which is why I probably packed too much into this—but I just don't have the time, right now, unfortunately. (Also, now they've kissed during their first reunion, and the fun part for me is waiting for them to kiss. Haha.) 
> 
> And the title is from 'Flesh and Bone' by Keaton Henson (whose songs feature heavily in In the Flesh)


End file.
